“She has been called back once or twice,” said her sister Ann.
Peg Hughes, who was being courted by Prince Rupert, was inclined to be kind. “And doubtless will be called again. The King was never a man to fix his love on one. Nell will remain one of his merry band, I doubt not.”
“She’ll be in the twice-yearly class,” said Beck.
“Well, ’tis better to play twice yearly than not at all,” said Peg quietly.
When Nell came among them, Beck said: “Have you heard the latest news, Nell? Moll Davies is to have a fine house and, some say, leave the stage.”
Nell for once was silent. She felt that she could not speak to them about the King and Moll Davies.
She had changed. She wondered: Shall I one day be like Elizabeth Weaver, waiting in vain for the King to send for me?
Early that year the Earl of Shrewsbury had challenged Buckingham to a duel on account of the Duke’s liaison with Lady Shrewsbury; the result of this was that Shrewsbury was killed. The King was furious. He had forbidden dueling, and Buckingham awaited the outcome in trepidation. He had now completely forgotten that he had decided to launch Nell at Whitehall.
In the summer she had the part of Jacintha in Dryden’s An Evening’s Love; or the Mock Astrologer. Charles Hart played opposite her.
Dryden, such an admirer of Nell’s, invariably had her in his mind when he wrote his plays, and Jacintha was Nell, so said all, “Nelly to the last y.”
The King was in his usual box and, as she played her part, Nell could not help gazing his way. Perhaps there was a mute appeal in her eyes, in her voice, in her very actions.
To love a King—that was indeed a tragedy, she had come to understand. She had no means of being with him unless sent for, no way of learning where she had failed to please.
Charles Hart as Wildblood wooed her on the stage before the King’s eyes.
“‘What has a gentleman to hope from you?’” he asked.
And Nell, as Jacintha, must answer: “‘To be admitted to pass my time with while a better comes; to be the lowest step in my staircase, for a knight to mount upon him, and a lord upon him, and a marquis upon him, and a duke upon him, till I get as high as I can climb.’”
The audience laughed loud and long.
Many covert glances were thrown at the King in his royal box and pert Nell on the stage. She had had her lord; she had reached her King; but she had not kept her King.
There was no sign on the King’s face to show how he received this piece of impudence. But Nell, intensely aware of him, believed he was displeased.
She went straight to her lodgings that night and wept a little, but not much. She had to show the world a bold front, and the next day she was a merry madcap once more.
“Nelly … the old Nelly … is back,” it was said.
And after a while it was forgotten that she had ever changed. There she was, the maddest and most indiscreet creature who had ever played in the King’s Theater, and the people crowded into the playhouse to see her.
Now and then the King came. Occasionally he sent for Nell. But Moll Davies had her fine house near Whitehall, and had left the stage.
All the actresses talked of Moll’s good fortune, and many wondered why it was that pretty, witty Nell had pleased the King so mildly and Moll had pleased him so much.
The company performed Ben Jonson’s Cataline. Lady Castlemaine sent for Mrs. Corey who was playing Sempronia—a most unattractive character—and gave her a sum of money on condition that she would, when playing the part, mimic Lady Castlemaine’s great enemy of the moment, Lady Elizabeth Harvey, whose husband had recently left London for Constantinople as the King’s ambassador.
During the very first performance, when the question was asked, “But what will you do with Sempronia?” Lady Castlemaine leaped to her feet and shouted at the top of her voice, “Send her to Constantinople.”
Lady Harvey was so incensed that she arranged that Mrs. Corey should be sent to prison for the insult. Lady Castlemaine then used all her influence, which was still great, to have her released. And when Mrs. Corey next played the part she was pelted with all manner of obnoxious objects, and men, hired by Lady Elizabeth, snatched oranges from the orange-girl’s baskets to throw at the actors on the stage.
Each night the play was performed there was an uproar between men hired by Lady Elizabeth Harvey and those hired by Lady Castlemaine. It was bad for the play and the actors, but good for business; for the theater was filled each time that play was performed.
Later, Dryden’s Tyrannic Love; or the Royal Martyr was produced; and in this Nell played Valeria, daughter of the Emperor Maximin who persecuted St. Catherine. It was a small part in which Nell stabbed herself at the end; then came the epilogue, which was to be her great triumph.
She felt exalted that day. She had escaped from the dismal creature she had become. She had been a fool to harbor such romantic thoughts about a King.
“Nelly, grow up,” she said to herself. “Have done with dreaming. What are you to him—what could you ever be—but a passing fancy?”
She lay dead on the apron stage and when the stretcher-bearers approached with her bier, she leaped suddenly to her feet, crying:
“Hold! Are you mad? You damned confounded dog!
I am to rise and speak the epilogue.”
Then she came to the very front of the apron stage—mad Nelly, the most indiscreet of all the actresses, pretty, witty Nell who had won their hearts.
The King, sitting in his box, leaned forward. She felt his approving eyes upon her. She knew that, try as he might, he could not withdraw them, and she believed then that neither Lady Castlemaine nor Moll Davies could have made him turn his eyes from her.
She cried in her high-pitched, mocking tones:
“I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye:
I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly.
Sweet ladies, be not frightened, I’ll be civil;
I’m what I was, a little harmless devil …”
The audience was craning forward to listen as she went on with the lines which were setting some rocking with laughter, while others, fearful of missing Nelly’s words, cried: “Hush!”
“O poet, damned dull poet, who could prove
So senseless to make Nelly die for love!
Nay, what’s yet worse, to kill me in the prime
Of Easter term, in tart and cheesecake time!”
She had thrown back her head; her lovely face was animated. Many caught their breath at the exquisite beauty of the dainty little creature as she continued:
“As for my epitaph when I am gone,
I’ll trust no poet, but will write my own:
‘Here Nelly lies who, though she lived a slattern,
Yet died a princess, acting in Saint Cattern.’”
The pit roared its approval. Nell permitted herself one look at the royal box. The King was leaning forward; he was clapping heartily; and he was smiling so intimately that Nell knew he would send for her that night.
She felt light-headed with gaiety. She had tried to act a part because she had loved a King. In future she would be herself. Who knew, had he known the real Nelly, Charles might have loved her too.
Charles did send for Nell that night, but secretly. Will Chaffinch came to her lodgings to tell her that His Majesty wished her to visit him by way of the back stairs.
In high good spirits Nell prepared herself for the journey and, very soon after Chaffinch had called at her lodgings, she was mounting the privy stairs to the King’s chamber.